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Legume Plots and Low-Input Cereal Strips Had at Least Five Times More Skylark Sightings

Wild Eurasian skylark in open habitat
Conservation · Management

On nine intensively managed commercial farms across Germany, Eurasian skylarks (Alauda arvensis) used some agri-environmental measures far more than the surrounding control crops. The study, published online on 28 July 2026 in the Journal for Nature Conservation, compared ten measures using seven years of systematic bird monitoring.

The clearest differences were found for two measures placed within cropped fields. Legume plots, typically 40 × 40 metre plots sown with peas in winter cereals, and low-input cereal strips in maize both had at least five times more skylark sightings than their controls. Annual fallows and one-hectare farmland bird plots had three to four times more sightings. Flower-based measures produced smaller gains of less than twofold, while some measures showed no positive effect.

The researchers excluded birds merely flying over the fields and analysed sightings as a direct measure of habitat use rather than as estimates of breeding-pair numbers. Of the ten measures tested, the analysis supported greater use of seven than of their respective reference crops. Wide-row cereals and maize–bean intercropping did not differ from controls, while flowering headlands were used less.

Distance from woodland also mattered. The authors recommend placing skylark measures at least 100 metres, and preferably 200 metres, from wooded areas to reduce the species’ avoidance of edges. They conclude that legume plots, low-input cereal strips in maize, fallows and farmland bird plots provide the strongest support among the tested measures under real farm conditions. The study did not determine what share of farmland must be covered by such measures to produce a population increase, which the authors identify as an important question for further work.

Sources and image credit

  1. Beninde, J., & Hunke, P. (2026). In-crop measures and fallows are most effective agri-environmental measures for the Eurasian skylark (Alauda arvensis) in Germany. Journal for Nature Conservation, 94, 127395. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jnc.2026.127395Primary research article, first available online 28 July 2026. Seven years of bird monitoring on nine intensively managed German farms compared ten agri-environmental measures for Eurasian skylark habitat use.

Image: Eurasian Skylark (Alauda arvensis) at Borit, Gojal, Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan, 13 November 2018. Photo: Imran Shah / Wikimedia Commons / Flickr. CC BY-SA 2.0. Representative species image; not a bird from the German farm study. · CC BY-SA 2.0 · Source

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